Germany to host IPBES secretariat

Fri, 20 Apr 2012

The secretariat of IPBES, a global platform on biodiversity and its benefits, will be located in Bonn, Germany. The German offer won the voting which took place during the second plenary session to build IPBES, in Panama City, Panama.

Photo: David Mihalic IUCN

France, Germany, India, Kenya and the Republic of Korea proposed to host the IPBES secretariat and the voting took four rounds to be completed.

The Chair of the plenary session, Professor Sir Robert Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), recognized the excellent quality of the offers and the commitment of these countries to the establishment of IPBES.

IUCN welcomes this step forward to the operationalization of the platform.

About IPBES
IPBES stands for Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES will be an interface between the scientific community and policy makers that aims to build capacity for and strengthen the use of science in policy making. IPBES will respond to requests for scientific information related to biodiversity and ecosystem services from governments, relevant UN Conventions, bodies and other relevant stakeholders. Governments have agreed that the four main functions of IPBES will be knowledge generation, options for assessment, policy relevant tools and capacity building.